Fledgling firms alone for takeoff

For a nation of small businesses, we are lacking in a basic tool used widely abroad to help entrepreneurs get started: incubators.

These are business centres, run typically by universities, local government or charities, and designed to help get new businesses off the ground.

They offer affordable space plus support services ranging from secretarial help to R&D and marketing skills.

Once a young company has proven its product and learned basic business skills, it graduates to commercial premises.

Incubators are effective across all types of business from high tech manufacturing to services.

A recent study of United States incubators found that 87 per cent of companies that graduated from incubators were still in business three years later.

North America has more than 600 incubators and Australia more than 100.

Yet, New Zealand's first, a joint venture between Wellington City Council and Victoria University, only recently opened.

A second is being developed by Dunedin City Council and the University of Otago.

Christchurch is trying to get support for one too.